Examining the evacuation problem

Published 7:00 pm, Saturday, October 1, 2005

The plan called for the creation of three mandatory evacuation "corridors," one of which was Interstate 45.

Sadler pledged the county's complete support at implementing the plan, but also made a prophetic declaration.

"Personally, I would take any other route than I-45," he said.

There are approximately two million Houston residents likely to follow his advice the next time a devastating storm like Rita bears down on Southeast Texas.

The bottom line about the evacuation of the greater Houston area ahead of the category 3 storm was that it worked. But just barely. Driven by the horrific scenes in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, an estimated 2.7 million people fled Houston and the surrounding areas. The evacuation was hailed as one of the largest mandatory migrations of civilians in modern U.S. history.

By 6 p.m. Friday, a good eight hours before Hurricane Rita made landfall on the Southwestern Louisiana coastline, I-45 through Montgomery County was desolate. But it took virtually every resource within the reach of both the county and the various municipalities to make that happen.

Several hundred cars were left behind in the county; abandoned by their owners who had either found additional transportation or who had been shuttled into nearly 40 shelters throughout the county. Many of those refuges were opened at the last minute to accommodate more than 5,000 evacuees who were stranded in the county when Rita struck.

The plan worked, but it was far different from the one unveiled several months earlier. In that version, Montgomery County's role was strictly secondary. It was designated as a "pass-through" county in which evacuees would stream through in a slow, but orderly fashion to areas farther north that provided shelter and comfort.

Instead, Montgomery County was unexpectedly thrust into the state and national limelight. Because of the I-45 construction at the San Jacinto River, the county was, rightly or wrongly, viewed as the reason why the evacuation plan didn't work. With cars inching along, the trip that was evacuation planners expected to last 3-4 hours was taking upwards of 30. As a result, the gasoline supply in the county - and in Conroe in particular - became scarce almost overnight.

The mobilization of the Department of Public Safety to create an 80-mile contra-flow sector on Thursday, Sept. 22 that opened all lanes of I-45 to northbound traffic, and the last-minute influx of free, state-donated gasoline that enabled evacuees to continue their trek north were critical in moving the evacuees out of Montgomery County.

But it wasn't just a simple matter of the state and federal governments coming to the rescue. Countless municipal and county employees worked endlessly to provide assistance to the evacuees.

"I think we did the best we could considering the circumstances," said Randy McDaniel, director of Montgomery County's Office of Emergency Management. "In a day and a half we moved, by all estimates, more than two million people. I think considering the magnitude of the traffic, we did a good job getting it through the county."

At the same time, McDaniel admits the county's role in the evacuation plan must be re-evaluated.

"We have to re-think the issue of being a pass-through county. We have to look at the plan and get with the state, so if anything changes in regard to Montgomery County, we can be prepared in the event this happens again."

So what went wrong? The original plan, which called only for the evacuation of Galveston County and the southernmost, flood-prone areas of Harris County, expected to move only around 500,000 residents from those areas.

However, more than four times that number of people tried to shoe-horn their way up I-45. Harris County OEM Coordinator Frank Gutierrez has admitted the plan never took into account the possibility of voluntary evacuees.

And, even as Harris County Judge Robert Eckels was declaring his county's OEM had never called for an evacuation of Harris County, Houston Mayor Bill White did tell his citizens that if they wanted to leave on their on accord, leave early.

That early evacuation is what caught Harris County emergency management officials off-guard. They had planned to implement their evacuation plan no later 36 hours prior to landfall, but I-45 was clogged well in advance of that timetable.

In fact, the evacuation had been announced to begin at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 20. The plan called for the gradual reduction of I-45 traffic lanes many miles in advance of Montgomery County. But that portion of plan was never implemented because evacuee traffic prevented Harris County DPS and Texas Department of Transportation workers from setting up the equipment.

By comparison, Montgomery County DPS troopers were already in place along I-45 early that morning. When traffic began build near midday, the troopers began shutting down the entrance ramps between the Harris County line and the San Jacinto River, per the guidelines of the original plan.

Traffic on that day, for the most part, flowed through Montgomery County at a relative consistent speed of 25-35 miles per hour. Just south of the county line in Harris County, however, all the northbound lanes were trying to squeeze into just two lanes. The madness had begun.

"It's a credit to the DPS in Montgomery," McDaniel said. "I think they did recognize some of the potential problems and started to see what was coming up from Houston."

How much greater of a difference the timely implementation of the evacuation plan along I-45 in Harris County would have made is up for debate. But it does illustrate a reactive, rather than a pro-active, response by Harris County to the rapidly changing conditions before the storm arrived.

McDaniel agreed that the concept of evacuating the coastal areas first is akin to emptying passengers on a bus from the back first, but it is a necessary method.

"The problem is how do you control that?" he said. "When you say it's time to evacuate Zone A and, if you're in Zone C, the thinking is that I might go ahead and leave, too."

One solution is for evacuation infrastructure to be in place on all sections of the designated corridors before the call for mandatory evacuation is issued. That includes the positioning of additional fuel supplies along the major freeways like I-45, as well as the Governor's office issuing emergency edicts to mobilize the delivery of both private and governmental supplies of gas.

"The state needs to do that," said Precinct 3 Commissioner Ed Chance.

What Chance envisions is the state delivering the fuel, with local and county entities in change of distributing the fuel. He and Precinct 2 Commissioner Craig Doyal announced Friday that they are planning to build portable, towable fuel tanks, each with a capacity of 1,000 gallons.

"When the gas gets here, we'll be able to get that type of emergency assistance accomplished in less than half the time," Chance said. "We were trying to do that with 110-gallon tanks on Friday (Sept. 23) and it was taking too much time."

Chance said the fuel distribution needs to be the responsibility of Montgomery County because of the "working knowledge" of the area by county personnel.

Although Texas' freeways are not designed for contra-flow traffic, Doyal expects the reverse traffic pattern to remain a part of the evacuation plan, however it is revised. As he points out, construction on I-45 is scheduled to continue for almost another decade. And even when the work is completed, the freeway is still scheduled to narrow back into four lanes just north of Conroe.

"That problem of traffic flow on I-45 is not going to disappear," he said.

Doyal's recommendation is to increase the number of evacuation corridors. The current plan essentially called for only three - Texas 6, I-45 and Texas 146. But as more people leave town in advance of "big ones" like Rita, there has to be more options, he said.

"I think we need to open up every possible route — U.S. 59, I-10 east or west," Doyal said. "We